TuffLuff

Dom Dietrich made a good point some weeks ago about seeing the league outside of a Derby bubble. In that, it becomes very easy to catastrophise everything and put more pressure on situations than what’s needed, it’s fairs to say we’ve been guilty of that in recent seasons. Like now, we think Bolton could go for it on Saturday but realistically can they afford to do it over 90 minutes risking injury to players? If they need 2-3 goals they can’t see what’s happening in our game and try and manage from that perspective either. Weirdly Ferguson has put Evatt in a more awkward situation than if they tried to win last night in my opinion too.

To make a somewhat semi serious point though, the stupidity of all this is that on Sunday and yesterday Coventry deserved all the plaudits for the game they made of it at Wembley. Also Leeds vs Boro was another very good game of football last night and deserves credit (with a bit of damnation over both sides defending as well)! But what are the top of football discussions at the minute? Antony celebrations, VAR decisions, pep moaning of fixture congestion’s and Forest losing the plot. If you want to know what is wrong with the premier league, it’s that they all live in a microcosm where they think we should all care about all these little things that shouldn’t matter over actual games of football.

I know someone every few weeks will bring up the Moment of Truth podcast up, but I started listening to it again Saturday morning after only listening to the first couple episodes when Warne joined us, and it’s maybe a really good moment in time to listen to it because there’s plenty to be taken from it about Warne and our coaching staff.

Percy showing his arse

John-Jules was in and around a promotion winning Ipswich side last year. More players we have around who’ve been in these situations before the better. He’s unlikely to play but can’t really see a negative as to having him around the place for a few weeks.

Just had a thought with this, but I presume the 1000 games includes the ‘red button’ midweek games for the championship? Id presume for UK watchers, if we were in League 1 we might still be able to watch on RamsTV in the week, but if we got promoted then Sky have the rights to those games? Can’t remember if this was the case a couple of seasons back or whether you could choose between sky and RamsTV, but yeah I don’t think you’ll see too many changes to what there is now tbh.

One thing I thought on Saturday, but when you have Bradley in you essentially have a leaders with experience in every part of your spine when you consider Smith and Collins. It makes a huge difference especially when NML is your team captain.

Some fans will always find it impossible to enjoy the moment, im annoyed about last night but you’ve got to embrace the ups and downs because it’ll be gone in a couple of weeks. As well unfortunately the hangover of Mel’s tenure still has its implications. We got into a decent position and everyone gets twitchy that it’ll be bottled because it’s not perfect. I find it quite funny that I see people whinging about Warne in a league we haven’t even got to. What makes you think about that and then think it’s worth posting on here or Twitter or whatever?

Sorry would usually agree, but that performance with three games to go…they deserve a bit of a kicking because there’s no excuses. It’s not about the result, it’s the performance.

I’m usually one trying to be rational about these things, but that performance at this time of the season bordered disgusting for me. Lazy passing, headless running, poor touches…and that was just Kane Wilson who gave one of the worst performances I’ve seen in a derby shirt this season. Don’t like singling out players for criticism, rarely do it, but for all his ‘Jack the lad’ persona not enough quality shines through when it matters. Within the context of the season and where we are, it was shockingly bad. I could have wax lyrical for hours about how good Derby were last week and every inch of praise was deserved. They lost all that goodwill tonight. I’ve got very little more I can say, it’s not that they haven’t won but the attitude/performance for where we are in the season was so below par.

Whilst it’s not worth going back and listening to a whole day worth of audio, it was a very impressive stint from Radio Derby and I really enjoyed it as something different. Lots of interesting bits with Eric Steele with the kit man etc, but also a pretty interesting kind of round table with Colin Gibson, Tom Loakes and Ed Dawes about the media side of things (including having to hide Marriott in the back of Gibbo’s car when he signed). Owen Bradley spoke well about RamsTV, a few interviews on the academy etc etc. It was just good radio tbh, and I hope people didn’t purposefully miss out because they talked themselves into thinking it was a distraction or whatever they were whinging about beforehand. I do find it quite funny that there were 9 pages on here before Monday and just after a page since it was broadcast. FWIW, the most important thing to come out of it is that it’s sured up the club’s relationship with Radio Derby. I might be wrong but I did sense it was all quite frosty under Mel’s tenure and there has probably been a bit of hangover in the 2-3 years since. I’m sure it’s not that any bridge mending was needed, but things like Warne doing a couple of interviews with presenters away from Dom and Ed are good because it brings a different perspective to Warne. Hopefully it means there will be more stuff like this was in the future. Great job by everyone involved!

Think this is a good point by Punjabi rams. It’s not necessarily the point we should be happy about it’s the level of confidence we played with. We looked like a promotion side against the best side in the league. We kept our shape and had a focus and a bit of swagger without it looking like we were playing above ourselves. We were willing ourselves to get a result. Although we’ve been consistent I don’t think we’ve looked assured, and that’s why we’ve had our Warne out/in debates and so much fluff surrounding the club this season. Last night was a step up for me, we looked a top side and I dare say even under Mac1 we didn’t look like ‘top 2’. There’s still a long way to go, and it’s not all wrapped up, but it’s been a long while since I could sense that confidence from a derby side on the pitch. That’s not me saying promotion is secured or anything like that, I just thought last night was a big step forward in the right direction performance wise.

Firstly, what an enjoyable game of football. Was a pleasure to see Derby as a part of that and matched a very good team at the top. Pompey will win this league, we can take confidence from our performance tonight into the last four matches. My only gripe, with my derby bias, is that I felt they got a few favourable decisions in that 10-15 minutes before they scored which helped peg us back into our own half and made us get deeper and deeper. But also, we didn’t help ourselves and seemed less and less comfortable. You didn’t think with 30 mins to go we could defend like we were and hold out because we were loosing shape too often and not getting the ball into their half for any length of time. Aside that, I can’t tell you one player who I thought played poorly and Warne got his tactics spot on. I can’t put it simpler. I’ve said a few times, one thing Warne has done really well this season is that every player has contributed to a key moment this season. Tonight was Joe Ward’s turn, he’s a big game player and he showed it tonight. Still think Blackett-Taylor may yet still get his before the season is out. Thought it was Adams best game, another who thrives to the occasion. Smith is maybe our most underrated player. Finally, four great goals. I don’t think we can analyse the ones we conceaded too much and neither can pompey with ours. Both sides have a bit of a weakness at full back and both sides were able to take advantage.

You can question, as a head of a supporters group, why you’ve been invited to a LIV-Pro event by him in the first place and whether it’s appropriate to accept that offer. Presumably this is the same LIV-Pro event where Kirchner was stepped by Dan Roan for not yet producing the funds for the takeover?